It's Quiet
by Noon Moon
Summary: A sadness corrupts the poor daemon and he falls.


**It's Quiet**

Disclaimer: They ain't my characters. Please don't sue me.

Summary: A sadness corrupts the poor daemon and he falls.

Pantalaimon had been awake for a few minutes, with Lyra lying quietly next to him, and he scurried around over her sleepy body mouse-formed. He had never known such silence in the college before; not a breath of wind fell on the loose windows and not a bird dared to shatter to heavy quiet. It must have been morning. Sure enough, the sun bled through the clouds and fell lightly, almost sympathetically, on the ancient buildings of Jordan College.

"Lyra," he whispered, only to receive a sluggish grunt, "I'm worried, Lyra."

"You're always worried, Pan.." Her voice was barely a voice at all. She sounded weak, and Pan felt it. He watched as she sat up, rubbed her eyes and pushed her messy dark blonde hair behind her ears. "What is it..?"

"It's quiet."

"It's early, that's why. No one's awake yet and I can't say I blame 'em."

Puppy-formed, he padded over to the chair by the window ledge, jumped effortfully onto it, his back legs running in mid air in the exertion of heaving his bulk off the floor. A laugh escaped Lyra. Oh, how she loved him; he felt it deep in his chest, his little beagle heart drowned in it. What he saw was nothing beyond the ordinary, nothing he had not seen a few thousand times before. CLANG.

In a flash, he changed - a baby ferret. His heart raced from fright and he bolted along a shelf and down onto the bed, curling himself tightly into a ball on Lyra's lap. After a moment he let his small face emerge from under the thin, grey blanket and jumped violently at another _clang_.

"What _is_ wrong with you this morning, Pan?" she said. "It was only the pots and pans in the kitchen. You know that. I bet it were Roger."

He shook himself and dragged his little figure back to the window, finding the chair much easier in his less clumsy form and watched a young boy, no more than 9, haul as many metal pots and pans as his slight frame could carry; perhaps slightly more than his slight frame could actually manage. He dropped one onto the intricately laid pathway through the courtyard to the kitchens and the noise reverberated off the walls like a gong. Pan could see that the boy himself gave a start at the noise he caused and looked around this way and that to check if he had disturbed anyone.

Feeling slightly silly, Pan changed into his biggest form, a lion, and offered a growl to boost his confidence. Lyra saw through his facade.

The boy, trying to balance the numerous pots in his arms, tried to lift the one of the floor with his foot, wobbling precariously. Lyra joined Pan at the window and pushed it open. Indeed, it was Roger.

"ROGER!" she shouted as loud as she could and blushed slightly as the shoulder of her nightgown slid off her bony shoulder the moment Roger found her among the hundreds of windows. His daemon had changed into a tiger in defense only to change back into a starling once he realised who called him.

"Lyra! Don't _do_ that! I thought you were the master!" As was inevitable, every single pot cascaded onto the floor with the racket of a train crash. Pan watched as he stood perfectly still, his face contorted into a grimace as the wave of noise passed over him. "Oh dear."

Pan nuzzled Lyra's shoulder, his strength almost toppling her sideways. She was happy and Pan wanted nothing more than to join her in her delight . To please her he changed into a robin, took to the window like a bullet and performed little tricks and maneuvers.

"I have a letter for you!" Roger called up to Lyra. "Come down here!"

"No way! You come up here!"

Pan rolled his eyes. He hated these pointless conversations and he knew that eventually it would come down to him to solve the problem. "Pan...?" There it was. He knew perfectly well what she wanted him to do and so he took a deep breath and plunged towards the manicured courtyard. A tugging sensation pulled at his stomach. He braced himself and continued to dive towards the daemon holding an untidy scroll in her beak. His breath was squeezed from his lungs. An overwhelming sickness grasped him and his heart bled. Pan knew that Lyra was suffering too, he knew that tears would be welling in her eyes and her heart too was being drowned in ice.

"Lyra.." he gasped. In panic, for he had never been this far away from his human before, he changed, completely unintentionally, into his puppy form, his saddest and most vulnerable form. His misery grabbed him and stroked him calmly into a hopeless stupor. Quiet whines of anguish escaped him and he fell.

"PAN!!!"

They all gasped; Roger, his daemon and Lyra. Lyra was incapable of rational thought and just watched in horror as her Pan, her dearest Pan, fell.

A quiet blackness descended on the tragic daemon.

He woke slowly, and thought that his body must be broken though he felt no pain. He tried cautiously to move a paw, and it responded. He opened his eyes and found that he was hanging limply from the mouth of a retriever daemon, with Roger striding up the stone stairway in front. He gave a quiet whimper. They entered a dank room, where Lyra was sitting up on the floor looking rather dazed; she had just recovered consciousness too.

"I caught him.."

Pan looked from Roger to Lyra. How small she looked, how frightened and pale. He wriggled against the retriever's teeth and landed in a clumsy heap on the floor. Thanking Roger's daemon, he looked towards the boy and saw how flushed he was but Pan was unable to tell whether it was from exertion or the deep sense of bashfulness that came from touching someone else's daemon.

"Thank you," she whispered quietly.


End file.
